shades

Hi there am new on here.Am in scotland and am planning on doing the inverness marathon in october.After reading some of the other threads a thought a would drop you a line and see if you could nudge me in the right direction regarding some sort of training plan.A train on ma own and usually do three or four runs per week and a 13 mile one on a sunday.The route i do during the week is six and a half miles.I done two half marathons last yers and really enjoyed them,first one in 1hr 37 mins and the next in 1hr 36 mins.A want to enjoy ma first marathon and dont want to under estimate it so i dont do myself justice,Thats why your or anyones help or advice would come in hand and would really be appreciated big time.

There are lots of plans on this website in the training section. Personally I'd recommend you get a copy of the book 'Advanced Marathoning' by Pete Pfitzinger and Scott Douglas. They have 12 and 18 week plans for a variety of different levels of mileage. Given where you're currently at you'll be well able for the up to 55 mile schedule and if you wanted to you could easily be ready for the 55 - 70 schedule by the time it starts. Aside from a training plan it has fairly sound basic advice for stretching and strength training.

Reading between the lines of your post, I'm guessing that you aren't doing any tempo or speedwork runs. Adding something like this should have a positive impact. (I've used the runnersworld smartcoach, and been happy with it, though some folks on these boards that know more than me don't like it much.)

Regarding the marathon itself, it's been called "undulating", which means "hilly". Try and spend some of your training time in the hills. (I missed my target time by a couple of minutes last year, and I attribute that partly to the fact that most of my training runs were flat.)

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